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The U.N. orders its weapons inspectors to leave Iraq after the chief inspector reports Baghdad is not fully cooperating with them.

-- Sheila MacVicar, ABC World News This Morning, 12/16/98

To bolster its claim, Iraq let reporters see one laboratory U.N. inspectors once visited before they were kicked out four years ago.

--John McWethy, ABC World News Tonight, 8/12/02

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The Iraq story boiled over last night when the chief U.N. weapons inspector, Richard Butler, said that Iraq had not fully cooperated with inspectors and--as they had promised to do. As a result, the U.N. ordered its inspectors to leave Iraq this morning

--Katie Couric, NBC's Today, 12/16/98/

As Washington debates when and how to attack Iraq, a surprise offer from Baghdad. It is ready to talk about re-admitting U.N. weapons inspectors after kicking them out four years ago.

--Maurice DuBois, NBC's Saturday Today, 8/3/02

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The chief U.N. weapons inspector ordered his monitors to leave Baghdad today after saying that Iraq had once again reneged on its promise to cooperate--a report that renewed the threat of U.S. and British airstrikes.

--AP, 12/16/98

Information on Iraq's programs has been spotty since Saddam expelled U.N. weapons inspectors in 1998.

--AP, 9/7/02

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Immediately after submitting his report on Baghdad's noncompliance, Butler ordered his inspectors to leave Iraq.

--Los Angeles Times, 12/17/98

It is not known whether Iraq has rebuilt clandestine nuclear facilities since U.N. inspectors were forced out in 1998, but the report said the regime lacks nuclear material for a bomb and the capability to make weapons.

--Los Angeles Times, 9/10/02

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The United Nations once again has ordered its weapons inspectors out of Iraq. Today's evacuation follows a new warning from chief weapons inspector Richard Butler accusing Iraq of once again failing to cooperate with the inspectors. The United States and Britain repeatedly have warned that Iraq's failure to cooperate with the inspectors could lead to air strikes.

--Bob Edwards, NPR, 12/16/98

If he has secret weapons, he's had four years since he kicked out the inspectors to hide all of them.

--Daniel Schorr, NPR, 8/3/02

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This is the second time in a month that UNSCOM has pulled out in the face of a possible U.S.-led attack. But this time there may be no turning back. Weapons inspectors packed up their personal belongings and loaded up equipment at U.N. headquarters after a predawn evacuation order. In a matter of hours, they were gone, more than 120 of them headed for a flight to Bahrain.

--Jane Arraf, CNN, 12/16/98

What Mr. Bush is being urged to do by many advisers is focus on the simple fact that Saddam Hussein signed a piece of paper at the end of the Persian Gulf War, promising that the United Nations could have unfettered weapons inspections in Iraq. It has now been several years since those inspectors were kicked out.

Saddam expelled U.N. weapons inspectors in 1998, accusing some of being U.S. spies.

--USA Today, 9/4/02

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But the most recent irritant was Mr. Butler's quick withdrawal from Iraq on Wednesday of all his inspectors and those of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors Iraqi nuclear programs, without Security Council permission. Mr. Butler acted after a telephone call from Peter Burleigh, the American representative to the United Nations, and a discussion with Secretary General Kofi Annan, who had also spoken to Mr. Burleigh.

--New York Times, 12/18/98

America's goal should be to ensure that Iraq is disarmed of all unconventional weapons.... To thwart this goal, Baghdad expelled United Nations arms inspectors four years ago.

--New York Times editorial, 8/3/02

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Butler ordered his inspectors to evacuate Baghdad, in anticipation of a military attack, on Tuesday night--at a time when most members of the Security Council had yet to receive his report.

--Washington Post, 12/18/98

Since 1998, when U.N. inspectors were expelled, Iraq has almost certainly been working to build more chemical and biological weapons,

--Washington Post editorial, 8/4/02

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Butler abruptly pulled all of his inspectors out of Iraq shortly after handing Annan a report yesterday afternoon on Baghdad's continued failure to cooperate with UNSCOM, the agency that searches for Iraq's prohibited weapons of mass destruction.

-- Newsday, 12/17/98

The reason Hussein gave was that the U.N. inspectors' work was completed years ago, before he kicked them out in 1998, and they dismantled whatever weapons they found. That's disingenuous.

--Newsday editorial, 8/14/02

--------------------To call humans 'rational beings' does injustice to the term, 'rational.' Humans are capable of rational thought, but it is not their essence. Humans are animals, beasts with complex brains. Humans, more often than not, utilize their cerebrum to rationalize what their primal instincts, their preconceived notions, and their emotional desires have presented as goals - humans are rationalizing beings.

BUTLER ordered the evacuation, not the UN. He did so under the ADVICE of Burleigh who NEW that the USA and Britain were going to bomb, they were already reducing the numbers of staff at embassies in the region.

Those statements from 98 give the impression that the UN made the order. Butler was in charge of UNSCOM, not the security council. That was the only way to guarentee that partisan politics did not influence disarmament.

In essence, the story being told now is closer to the truth, then the story being spewed back then. Iraq did not cooperate from the beggining, and never had any intention of doing so in the future.

The UN security council was trying to lessen the requiremnets it had initiated after the GULF WAR, in an attempt to lift the economic sanctions, without IRAQ ever complying with the UN.

Butler Was trying to do his job. Iraq refused to let him do his job and refused to comply. Iraq changed the rules as he went. Obstructed the inspections constantly .

In the end after reading BUTLERS account of the whole situation, I would say IRAQ forced Butler to evacuate, and the US and Britain Did what the UN should have been doing all along. USE THE FORCE NECESSARY to Disarm IRAQ.

I prefer the BIAS of today!!! If it makes you nervous to believe what they are saying now. Just know that IRAQ DID EXPEL U.S. inspectors that were working for UNSCOM, it did so during the six month period leading up to the final evacuation. Butler refused to allow this obvious violation of IRAQS agreement with the UN, so he evacuated everybody.

Butler wanted to go back into Iraq, and do his JOB. IRAQ made sure he would never be allowed to do this again. Russian, French, and Chinese influence within the UN guarenteed that BUTLER would never step foot back in IRAQ.

Butler refused to look the other way.

The IRAQI government is to blame for anything that has happened and will continue to happen to it's citizens. Russia, China, France, and the majority of Kofi Annans staff, in the end, decided to look the other way, some in the name of BUSINESS, some in the name of Relief for the Iraqi people.

UNMOVIC was formed by resolution 1284. It is the new version of UNSCOM, that lacks the independent power UNSCOM had. This entity takes it's orders directly from the UN. Unlike UNSCOM which gave BUTLER the power to make decisions on his own(independent from partisan politics).

In Butlers own words" If the united states fails to insist that the resolution be implemented honestly, if it allows Russia and others to traduce it, then we will know that the real purpose of Resolution 1284 was not to re-establish serious disarmament and arms control in IRAQ but to solve the problem of Iraq's recalcitrance by political agreement-to declare victory and go home."

In other words, UNSCOM was dismantled and replaced with a "look the other way" inspections system.

Apparently, Bush JR. doesn't like that type of inspection system!!!

I agree with him, and BUTLER.

Sorry to have gone off topic a bit. I would say the Mass Media sells what it thinks you want to hear, in the way it wants to tell you.

That's why I read Butler's account. He is not AMERICAN. He is not IRAQI. He was the guy in charge of DISARMING IRAQ. He was privy to all the information, not just pieces of it. He was the one negotiating with the IRAQI government.

Butler Was trying to do his job. Iraq refused to let him do his job and refused to comply. Iraq changed the rules as he went. Obstructed the inspections constantly . In the end after reading BUTLERS account of the whole situation, I would say IRAQ forced Butler to evacuate...

Well... metaphorically speaking, you COULD say that Iraq "forced" the UNSCOM inspectors to leave by making it completely impossible for them to get their job done, but not LITERALLY speaking. Literally speaking, it was still a voluntary decision by Butler to withdraw rather than a situation where Iraq revoked their visas and herded them all to the airport.

For what it's worth, I agree with Butler's decision. There was absolutely no point in the UNSCOM team staying any longer. As I remember the media reports immediately after the UNSCOM withdrawal, this is when Clinton first started discussing resumed military action to complete the job. Of course, being Clinton, he lost interest in it after a while.

Excellent summary, Teonan. I enjoy your contributions to this forum and wish you would drop by more oftem.

And Butler, the man in charge of the team (thus also in charge of Scott Ritter), says that he made the decision on his own. Note that he was chastised by the UN for making that decision unilaterally. The UN felt he had overstepped his authority.

Alex you should read Butlers book. He discusses the position Ritter took.

Butlers job was to LEGALLY SPY on IRAQ for the UN. He was to use this SPYING authority to rid Iraq of WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. This authority was given to him by the UN and the IRAQI government. The IRAQI government then refused to allow him to do his JOB.

Any member nation of the UN had access to the information aquired. To expect the US, not to look at it is REDICULOUS. To assume that the US demanding adherence to the LAW, IRAQ acknowledged at the END of the GULF WAR, is somehow mishevious is REDICULOUS.

What troubles me is WHY the UN is willing to look the other way!!! That seems far more SUSPECT then anything BUTLER, or the US did during the Life of UNSCOM.

Butlers JOB was to SPY for the UN. He was hired to SPY on IRAQ. Iraq agreed to the SPYING and then spent the entire time preventing it. Then has the NERVE to COMPLAIN that a MEMBER of the UN, might have access to the Information, and might use it to reach the ULTIMATE GOAL of the inspections.

Talk about the ULTIMATE SPIN DOCTOR. Saadam is the BEST. He even has you believing that the US is responsible for his people suffering in 2002. He lives LIKe a KING, his people suffer, and it is the WESTS fault.

Do you blame the police when you get robbed? Do you blame the officials you elected for the decisions they make? Do you take any responsibility for your own actions?

See I take responsibility for my government assisting a MADMAN to take control of a country. That is why I support having him removed. We owe it to the IRAQIS, we owe it to the whole region. Just like we owe the region some assitance in putting a stop to ISRAELI expansion.

Making mistakes in the past, doesn't preclude you from making the right decision in the present, or future.

600,000 kids have died so far. According to Bush the sanctions are utterly useless in preventing him building weapons of mass destruction. What on earth have we been doing for the last 10 years? Have 600,000 kids died for nothing??

Well.... 600,000 would have died if they had been dropped from planes cruising at 15,000 feet!

--------------------You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers

Actually, "all" the experts on the ground studying this do not say 600,000.

The infant mortality studies (two of them) were done by the UN. The authors of the studies specifically stated that it is impossible to attribute X number of deaths to the effects of the sanctions and Y number of deaths to other factors. For example, they were extremely critical of the substantial rise in the percentage of Iraqi infants fed on bottle formula rather than breast milk, and mentioned that they had since instituted a vigorous publicity campaign with the Iraqi government to encourage breast-feeding. They say that many of their other studies had shown that formula-feeding is a major risk factor in other third-world nations.

I excerpted the relevant quotes in a previous post (sorry, in a rush this morning -- no time to look up the specific post right now) and provided a link to the studies for people who cared enough to read the actual STUDY rather than parrot the various biased MISINTERPRETATIONS of the study. The study is on the UN website (UNESCO? OXFAM? Can't remember which UN agency it was right now).

The same studies noted that the mortality rate of the under-five-year-old group actually DECREASED by about ten per cent in Northern Iraq in the ten years after sanctions were imposed compared to the ten year period immediately pre-sanctions. Does this mean that in Northern Iraq (where Saddam's influence is weakest) the sanctions are actually SAVING lives? The statistics say so.

I personally believe the sanctions MUST be at least a contributing factor to the increase in infant mortality rates -- simple logic tells me so. But the famous "600,000" number is unsupported by the studies. It is a more or less arbitrary maximum number.

Okay, I found one of the posts where I quoted the UNESCO study. Rather than link it, I just cut and pasted it from the thread "We are starving but we can field a 1 mm man army" started by Lord Morham, last post to the thread was made Sept 24, 2002.

Rono writes:

you're disputing the number of dead Iraqi's?...You sound like a Neo-Nazi saying that the 6 million jews that dies was a hoax..but I will provide you proof anyways. UN sanctions on Iraq lead to deaths of 500,000 children Iraq deaths double under UN sanctions The Sanctions ...Is that enough, or would you like more?

Those numbers are inflated. I dispute them, many other people dispute them, and UNICEF's own reports dispute them. This is a repost of what I posted in another thread :

As UNICEF itself is scrupulously careful to point out in UNICEF: Questions and Answers for the Iraq child mortality surveys - BAGHDAD, 16 August 1999 (UNICEF) Survey Methodology/credibility --

"These surveys were never intended to provide an absolute figure of how many children have died in Iraq as a result of sanctions. Given the difficulty of accurately and specifically attributing the cause of death of a child to sanctions, any such figure that may be derived would certainly be questionable."

UNICEF also said in the same report:

"A dramatic increase in bottle-feeding of infants has occurred in Iraq. Given the contribution of bottle-feeding to higher levels of malnutrition and child mortality, UNICEF is urging the Government to remove breastmilk substitutes from the rations and replace them with additional food for pregnant and lactating women. UNICEF has also called on the Government to promote exclusive breastfeeding of infants as a national policy."

Could you please explain for us the connection between Iraqi women following the worldwide trend of moving towards a more modern (albeit arguably less nutritious) method of child-rearing (bottle-feeding vs. breast-feeding) and the imposition of the United Nations sanctions? Could it be possible that the sanctions have nothing to do with it at all -- that ALL of the increase in infant mortality is instead due to the "dramatic increase in bottle-feeding"? For the record, I personally don't believe it IS entirely due to bottle-feeding, but as UNICEF themselves say, it is difficult to specifically attribute the death of a child to any single cause. Certainly UNICEF feels bottle-feeding is a serious enough factor in the increase in Iraq's infant mortality to emphasize in no uncertain terms their opposition to it.

Here's some more from the report:

"In the autonomous northern region, under-5 mortality rose from 80 deaths per 1000 live births in the period 1984-1989 to 90 deaths per 1000 live births during the years 1989-1994. The under-5 rate fell to 72 deaths per 1000 live births between 1994 and 1999. Infant mortality rates followed a similar pattern."

Now isn't that interesting! In the northern region of Iraq, where Hussein's control is weakest, the latest availale mortality rates are actually 10% lower than they were ten years earlier, before sanctions were imposed. What is the only possible conclusion we can draw from this? Why, it MUST be that the sanctions are actually SAVING CHILDREN'S LIVES!!!!! *sarcasm*

Seiously, though, what is the most likely explanation for this documented drop? Someone with less belief than I in Hussein's oft-demonstrated concern for his fellow man might say that in the autonomous north the humanitarian supplies are actually making it to those who need it, rather than being hijacked by Hussein's thugs to be resold at a profit through the black market.Sound bites and carefully selected snippets are worse than useless when it comes to statistical analyses. The METHODOLOGY of the surveys must be considered, and ALL factors looked at, not just the ones which appear to support your personal agenda.

Besides, all of this is moot, because it is all Saddam's fault anyway. Have the sanctions made life more difficult for the Iraqi poor? Yep. Would the sanctions have been imposed if Iraq had not invaded Kuwait? Nope.

How many dead kids is ok in your opinion? If only 200,000 kids had died would it be ok?

Just 3000 people died on sep 11 and we havn't heard the last of it for 12 months. I presume you agree that thousands more kids than 3000 have died in Iraq thanks to the sanctions? Or do you stand firm that sanctions havn't killed a single child?

Have the sanctions made life more difficult for the Iraqi poor? Yep.

Then why continue them? You admit they have no effect whatsoever on Saddam. According to Bush himself they have not affected Saddams ability to make weapons of mass destruction - that's why we have to go in and invade Iraq. So pray tell, what use to anyone are they? Apart from simple terrorism?